Amazon quietly made a major change to its Digital Text Platform last week that went largely unnoticed: small publishers and individual authors who use the Digital Text Platform can now opt out of the Kindle's digital rights management (DRM) program. While this change only affects a relatively small number of publishers and authors for now, this move could hint at a larger change in Amazon's DRM policy. Right now, Amazon's DRM policy means that its customers can't transfer their books to a non-Kindle e-reader.

This is really great news - we want the authors and publishers to be rewarded for their good efforts, but we also want to be able to use what we buy.

Strangely enough, the Overdrive model does not bother me. A book I rent for a 14 day period (at low/no cost), and then which self destructs, makes it clear I am just renting it for a single read. Books I purchase, however, I want to be able to correct formatting, punctuation, and grammar since the publishers seem to be doing such a bad job.

Currently, are there any other electronic reading devices that can support Kindle books? ... other than those like the iphone where you have to download the amazon software to read them.

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Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Just iPhone/iPod Touch and Windows PC's.

Unless, of course, they're .azw and you're willing to do something that may be illegal, like removing the DRM. Then they can be read on any device that supports Mobipocket or converted to other popular formats like ePub.